You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"

Back to Methuselah, act I, in Selected Plays with Prefaces (1949), vol. 2, p. 7. The serpent says these words to Eve. John F. Kennedy quoted this line in his address to the Irish Parliament, Dublin (June 28, 1963); Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, p. 537. Robert F. Kennedy used a similar quotation as a theme of his 1968 campaign for the presidential nomination: "Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not." Ted Kennedy quoted this variation in delivering Robert F. Kennedy's eulogy in 1968; reported in The New York Times (June 9, 1968), p. 56.